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You've loved so many of his movies. "Star Wars," of course. "The Magnificent Seven." That first great Clint Eastwood western, "A Fistful of Dollars." And, most recently, "A Bug's Life."
No, Akira Kurosawa didn't really direct those movies.
But he wrote and directed the films that inspired other directors to make those movies. ("Inspired" is polite; in some cases, the films other directors made were close copies of Kurosawa's stories and themes.) And the films that Kurosawa did make--"Rashomon" and "The Seven Samurai," most notably--are sufficiently miraculous for critics and audiences alike to regard him as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Akira Kurosawa died in 1998 at the age of 88, having directed thirty feature films. Thirty thousand Japanese attended his funeral--including 5,000 people from the Japanese film industry itself. They knew: no one like him before, no one like him coming along. His memoir is Something Like an Autobiography. It's as remarkable as his films.
No, Akira Kurosawa didn't really direct those movies.
But he wrote and directed the films that inspired other directors to make those movies. ("Inspired" is polite; in some cases, the films other directors made were close copies of Kurosawa's stories and themes.) And the films that Kurosawa did make--"Rashomon" and "The Seven Samurai," most notably--are sufficiently miraculous for critics and audiences alike to regard him as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Akira Kurosawa died in 1998 at the age of 88, having directed thirty feature films. Thirty thousand Japanese attended his funeral--including 5,000 people from the Japanese film industry itself. They knew: no one like him before, no one like him coming along. His memoir is Something Like an Autobiography. It's as remarkable as his films.
